Rifles - Forgotten Weapons

Confiscated Homemade Poachers’ Guns from Zimbabwe

December 17, 2018 Ian McCollum 36

I had a chance to visit Hire Arms in Johannesburg – a movie arms supply company. Among many other things in their collection, they had an assortment of extremely crude handmade firearms confiscated from poachers […]

Shooting the Full Auto XM-8 Carbine

December 15, 2018 Ian McCollum 53

Thanks to H&K and to Trijicon for range access, we are out today shooting an original and authentic XM-8 carbine! The XM-8 family are relatively bulky guns; moreso than one would expect from seeing photos […]

Almost Adopted: The H&K XM8 Family

December 14, 2018 Ian McCollum 46

Today we are in H&K’s Grey Room in Virginia, taking a look at the XM-8 program. The rifle evolved form the kinetic energy carbine portion of the doomed XM29/OICW program, and eventually became the G36 […]

DeserTech 7.62mm MDR Teardown

December 13, 2018 Ian McCollum 33

The DeserTech MDR (“Micro Dynamic Rifle”) has been in the works for several years now, after being initially announced at SHOT Show in 2014, if I recall correctly. While it was probably prematurely unveiled, the […]

XM29 OICW Mockup

December 12, 2018 Ian McCollum 39

The OICW – Objective Individual Combat Weapon – was part of a program in the 1980s and 1990s to replace the whole lineup of uS small arms with a consolidated group of new high-tech ones. […]

Shooting the Stoner: Mk23, Bren, and 63A Carbine

December 8, 2018 Ian McCollum 38

Is the Stoner 63 really as good of a gun as everyone says? Today is my first opportunity to try one out on the range, and I’m going to look at it in three different […]

Stoner 63, 63A, & Mk23: History and Mechanics

December 7, 2018 Ian McCollum 2

The Stoner 63 is a firearm surrounded by a tremendous amount of mythology. It was Eugene Stoner’s big project following on the AR-15, and it was a brilliant piece of engineering – a single modular […]

LDP / Kommando: the “Rhuzi”

December 5, 2018 Ian McCollum 48

The Kommando was a semiauto SMG-type carbine designed by Alex du Plessis in Salisbury Rhodesia in the late 1970s. It was manufactured by a company called Lacoste Engineering, and financed by a man named Hubert […]

Pre-Production FG-42 (Type C)

December 3, 2018 Ian McCollum 29

Thanks to the generosity of a collector in the Association of Maltese Arms Collectors and Shooters, we have a chance today to take a look at a pre-production FG-42, serial number 015. This is one […]

Type 13 Manchurian Mauser – A WW1 Legacy in China

November 26, 2018 Ian McCollum 28

This rifle sold for $5,750 at Rock Island on December 2, 2018. The Liao Type 13 was produced at what would become known as the Mukden Arsenal in Manchuria starting in 1924, with production facilitated […]